Canning Salsa: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

The Good:
My family goes through a lot of salsa, about a jar every week. Since we started this diet it seems to be one of our favorite snacks. If you can find a great organic salsa, that's low in sodium, it's a great healthy snack to pair with some organic corn chips. Salsa is usually around 10 calories for 1 tablespoon, and the ingredients are a ton of great vegetables.

The (Semi) Bad:
We planted our garden this year with plans of making and canning homemade salsa. We planted tomatoes, green peppers, and jalapenos.  We then planned a day of nothing but canning, but got started a lot later in the day than we had planned. We set up everything, eager and ready to get started...and realized we were missing lids for the cans, onions, and vinegar....so we weren't as prepared as we thought. Anyways the process was made easier by many hands, but I was still tired by the end. We had frozen tomatoes throughout the season so we had enough to not only can 10 jars of salsa, but also can another 10 jars of plain diced tomatoes. Here was the process we followed:

1) We blanched all the tomatoes and peeled the skins off them
2) We used a food processor to chop the onions, peppers and jalapenos
3) We diced the tomatoes by hand (the frozen ones were easier to dice up)
4) We heated all the ingredients together and simmered for 10 minutes
5) Placed salsa in jars and canned

Recipe: Adapted from my Aunt Pam's Amazing Salsa Recipe

4 c peeled, diced tomatoes
2 c  chopped green peppers
1/2 c diced jalapeno peppers (more or less to adjust spice level)
3/4 c chopped onion
4 cloves of garlic, diced
1 c vinegar (we used white vinegar, but next year I want to try cider vinegar)
2 packets salsa seasoning

The Ugly (or better described as "The Messy"):

Simmering the ingredients for 10 minutes

Diced Tomatoes for Canning

Since you are dicing tomatoes anyways a pot of chili to eat after all the hard work is done is essential =)

This is the seasoning packet I used, although next year I would like to do all my own seasonings instead of using a packet

Mmmm!!!! We've already devoured two jars. It's sooo good!

There are definitely a couple things I would like to do differently next year. Starting earlier in the day would have helped, and of course making sure we had all the ingredients would have been helpful. We only used 4 jalapenos (instead of the 1/2c like we should have), and when it was simmering the salsa tasted super spicy so we didn't add anymore, but when we opened the canned jars it wasn't spicy at all, which was a little disappointing since I love my salsa spicy, so next year I'm adding a lot more jalapenos! 

Even if you don't have a garden you can easily can your own homemade salsa simply by hitting up a farmer's market and buying all your fresh ingredients there. Not a salsa fan? Homemade spaghetti sauce is another great staple to can.